Friendships and health.

Dec 17, 2018

Coupleworks.co.uk has read in the last few weeks that friendships are beneficial to mental and physical health.
Coupleworks, formed in 2004 is a non profit making group of skilled therapists who between us have gathered approximately 150 years of couple counselling and one to one therapeutic knowledge. That in itself is remarkable but the significant side effect which we are beginning to learn about is the benefit to our physical and mental health.
We are all women ranging in age, talents and learning. We support each other when one of us has a difficult time and feel good when one of us has something personal to celebrate.
Dr. David Spiegel, head of Psychiatry at Stanford University in California, emphasises that girlfriend time helps women to create more serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression. This can create a general feeling of well-being. I think that men also benefit from their friendships but tend to bond in a different way. When men meet they often form relationships around activities and work problems or success. Dr Spiegel believes that spending time with a friend or friends is as important to our overall health as jogging or ‘working out’.
It is said that men need sex to experience intimacy and women need intimacy to experience sex. This shows that either from nature or nurture, men and women even in this enlightened age still need different bonding skills which they seek in a myriad of ways.
In the years of existence, Coupleworks has grown from 6 totally different women, passionate about our profession to something both valuable and of benefit to our health.
These kinds of face to face meetings, where the benefit is now medically recognised, flies in the face of social media connection which is two dimensional and risks anxiety and stress as a side effect. The third dimension, when two or more friends are breathing the same air, may well be an antidote to anxiety and depression. Whichever genders form a couple, the trust between the two helps to enable separating out to meet friends without resentment or fear of rejection. The benefit of this, in turn, fertilises the couple and makes each person more exciting to be with.
Technology has made our lives more convenient and some believe, more connected. Psychologist Dr Becky Spelman, however, said: ‘With all our technology we mustn’t overlook the importance of honest, from the heart, human interactions with one another’.
Being in the same space at the same time is productive in so many ways that technology cannot replicate.
Clare Ireland.